The Violent Femmes' Brian Ritchie and Victor DeLorenzo haven't spoken to each other in five years. But in just a couple of weeks, the Milwaukee musicians, along with Femmes frontman Gordon Gano and longtime touring cajon player John Sparrow, will play music together in front of tens of thousands of people.

The April 13 reunion show at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in Indio, Calif., will be the band's first performance since Oct. 13, 2007.

And it won't be the only one. According to the tour page on the Femmes' site, the band will open Summerfest with a homecoming show June 26 at the Marcus Amphitheater.

John Boler, chief marketing officer with Summerfest's parent company, Milwaukee World Festival Inc., confirmed the bookingTuesday afternoon. Ticket prices, show times and sale dates have yet to be announced.

Sources told the Journal Sentinel that other bands will perform at the amphitheater on opening night, but Boler would not discuss what bands, if any, would share the amphitheater bill with the Femmes, only to say that more announcements regarding opening day are to come.

"There's a healthy bit of tension and animosity going into it," DeLorenzo said of the reunion in an interview at his Milwaukee studio. "It's common knowledge that it was not always happy times among the three of us."

DeLorenzo left the band in 1993 and came back to the fold in 2000.

In August 2007, Ritchie surprised Gano with a lawsuit, seeking a ruling declaring himself as half owner of the band's songs. The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court in Manhattan, also claimed Ritchie was deprived of a proper accounting of the band's earnings and took issue with Gano allowing the band's most famous song, "Blister in the Sun," to be used in a Wendy's commercial.

DeLorenzo told the Journal Sentinel that Ritchie asked him to join the lawsuit but he declined. The Femmes performed four more times after the suit was filed, but understandably there was some awkwardness within the group, DeLorenzo said.

"There are certainly some disputes that haven't been resolved," he said. "There's no will to do anything creative there."

DeLorenzo said Ritchie and Gano settled their lawsuit out of court early last year. Gano, who is based in New York, declined a request for an interview. Ritchie, in a phone call from Tasmania, where he is the curator for the MONA FOMA music festival and performs in the band the Break, wouldn't discuss details.

"That's just between me and Gordon," he said.

He did confirm that they buried the hatchet before Coachella officials contacted the Femmes' booking agent, Frank Riley, proposing a reunion show last year.

"That's one of the premiere music festivals in the world, so we took that seriously," Ritchie said.

The shows - the Femmes will also play Coachella on April 20 - also came with a really "nice paycheck," DeLorenzo said.

"But that's not the main reason I'm doing it," Ritchie said.

Even though Ritchie said he had "moved on from identifying with Violent Femmes," he agreed to the reunion because the band "means a lot to a lot of different people from all different age groups." He said another motivating factor was to spend more time with his son Silas, 27, who lives in Madison, "and to give him an opportunity to see the band again."

For DeLorenzo, the money is also a byproduct of the reunion.

"I like the idea of the Femmes playing together again," he said. "I'm as much a fan as anybody."

"I miss the music," he added. "And I felt like I could give something new to it."

As for the possibility of new Femmes music or additional tour dates, DeLorenzo said it was too soon to say.

"I would like to think we can go to do something else," he said. "Maybe in my wildest dreams we can make another album. I'd be excited to do it, to see what we can all bring to it. But I don't really feel like that's a distinct possibility."

"We haven't been in a room together for five years, so we'll see how it all goes," he added. "It's all baby steps."

With confirmation of the Femmes appearance, there are only two more Marcus Amphitheater shows to be announced for Summerfest's 46th year, running from June 26 to 30 and July 2 to 7.

In addition to reuniting with the Femmes, Victor DeLorenzo is about to release a solo album that was nine years in the making. For more on that project, read the Local Beat column Friday in the Journal Sentinel and on TapMilwaukee.com.

About Piet Levy

Piet Levy covers music for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and TapMilwaukee.com. For more music updates, you can also follow him on Facebook and Instagram​.